A Viking's Tale
by thefounding-rpg
Summary: Once upon a time there were three brothers. Each of them died, leaving their belongings to plague wizards and muggles alike, in 1018 CE. All events surrounding the crown and invasion are historical *this text is a prelude to thefounding-rpg.tumblr*
1. The Elder Peverells

_The elder Peverells_

_._

Once upon a time there were three brothers. One met a savage end at the hands of his own vanity, the second fared better, if a death of grief can be counted as a means to happiness. The third escaped. While not believing himself to be cleverer or better than his brothers, Ignotus Peverell was the one granted the fortune which cloaked him from death. For three hundred odd years it was passed on from father to the eldest born, and the line was graced with luck. Ignotus's line rose in prosperity from the gratitude of their neighbors; for the cloak brings with it an awareness of the needs of others. There was never a Peverell who was haughty or stingy towards muggle or wizard, and each eldest child took their responsibility with a keen heart and sharp mind.

Humber had accepted their governing, with the title of Duke over the land, for a hundred years before Viking raids became prevalent and costly on the northern coast of Britannia. Humber was raided as were Kent and other holdings. The intent was easily isolated: the English were too used to their habit of isolation and their wealth was not heavily guarded. Town after town fell as matchsticks, leaving a handful of the devastated to reclaim the scorched hovels and bury their dead.

The first raid came under the Duke Edmond Peverell of Humber, and his concern for the people of his land trumped even his care for his first born son, Roderc, an act which should not belittle his compassion. He did all he could to ease their suffering, but Edmond knew this would not halt the Viking assaults. On the contrary, enriching his people would do to encourage the brutish northerners from Denmark. A petition of the King and his new Queen of England came of no avail, for all he received was a letter in the hand of the young Queen Emma stating that the Vikings could be swayed with gold, and this would do to save his people from continual destruction. It would appear that the Vikings had been refused payment of tithe in the previous year of our Lord, 1000 because the royal coffers had run dry from the defense of the nation.

The Duke was no fool, but he was he was left with no alternative. The choice fell between his people's gold and lives, or his own gold. The Duke sent 20,000 pounds to London to buy off the raids, and under Emma's scrutiny 4,000 more were added to buy the Viking's interest from all of Britannia.

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	2. Emma the Auspicious

__Emma the Auspicious__

_._

Emma was born the daughter of Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy. Both her mother and her father were of direct Danish ancestry, settling in the Viking territory of Normandy, after Richard legitimized Emma's mother from mistress to wife. From this standpoint Emma watched many longships set off for plunder, returning with hardly a loss of life among them. The English must be dimwitted, foolhardy, and deserving of invasion if they could not defend themselves.

Her attitude was not swayed when she was first betrothed, and then wed, to the King of those weak, brittle people. Her seduction of the man was undertaken begrudgingly, but as it came with a kingdom there was hardly cause for her complaints to her parents to be heard. King Æthelred the Unready of England took the bait readily. In the midst of renewed Viking attacks, he was seeking a way in which he could restore order with the least cost to his own pocket and pride. A battle would risk its defeat and his own death, and there was no good in being King if there was not gold in the treasury to be King with. A marriage to the young Emma, Viking princess, gave a glint of hope.

The attacks, however, did not decrease in the slightest.

Æthelred did not count on his new wife getting her hand into his letter desk, and worming her way next to his advisors. The aging King paid little mind. There was little good a woman could do in affairs of state, but the Viking front was a front none less than the likes of God would change in England's favor. If it had been any other girl but the pious, devoted Emma, she would not have been as successful.

A thirteen year old Queen is rarely taken into confidences or given any chance to prove herself in this manner. Much less for one born Danish, but to her salvation she had also been born in the Catholic tradition of the Holy Roman Empire, as was not uncommon for Nordic nobles. The English were still grappling between secular canons and the rise of the Benedictines, a faction which also looked to the Pope in Rome for its authority. It was not difficult for Emma to come to the understanding that to win her legitimacy it would be to do so by the divine right of a common God. Her devotion, her compassion to the people was without rival, and with it she began to witness events in the London palace she would not have otherwise been privy to.

Emma may have been young but she was not blind. All talk around Æthelred and his advisor revolved around the Viking raids, which had been becoming rising in severity and frequency. The Advisor's words were of calming the King, who was unprepared for any major actions and took the advisor at his word that the tithe alone would satisfy. But Emma would not believe her Danish relatives could return peacefully to their homeland without first claiming Britannia for their own. It was a land ripe for the taking, ruled and inhabited by people too stupid to defend it.

Emma would do what she could to bring the event to its day of glory.

Then she would be embraced as Queen, her Vikings defending the castle, the land and its riches would be beyond dispute. All traces of the devil worshipers would be purged from the county. Perhaps the English would even be taught how to bathe properly as well. The first step had already been taken; securing payment to her brethren from some family in Humber, the Peverells, promising them their lands would not be threatened again.

The Queen had not taken kindly to the news that there existed in this godforsaken island those who consorted with the devil. She had been blessed with this information from the bishop of London, whom in her early days as Queen she had often sought advice and information. He had spoken of a place unplottable on any map where there dwelled people born with certain devilish abilities. The idea had turned Emma's stomach. These _demons_ were the greatest threat to her Queenship, lived on untaxable land, and possessed abilities which might be capable of defeating the Danish in combat. Only such an atrocity could exist in a city as diseased as _London_.

But she would have to know more. If there was one talent Emma possessed it was the ability to stand back and keep a watchful eye. She had already infiltrated the British throne, keeping it was proving to be tricky.

The streets of London, behind its stolid fortress walls, was not a place for a Queen. Soiled shoes and jealous leers were the least of what might accost her in a city filled with the dead and excrement of its occupants. Placing her crown aside, it took two months before Emma found a trace of the unfamiliar magic she had been warned of. Taking the clothes of a chimney sweep who frequented the castle from the local orphanage, she began to comb the streets for a place that would be impossible to draw on a map, but the very idea of such a place baffled her. Surely if one could see it, it was able to be drawn? Was it invisible? But if it was unable to been seen with the naked eye, wouldn't a gap in the heart of the city slums be regarded as odd?

And there she had appeared, as if out of thin air. This last thought went unknown to Emma, for it slid from her mind before she had the chance to hold onto it, but the girl caught her attention for a different reason then her soiled and ragamuffin appearance.

She was holding a Rosary, the symbol of the devotion to the church, and toying with it in her dirt encrusted fingers. As she did so, each bead exploded with an audible _POP_.

Incensed, Emma bit back her immediate rage at the action and hesitated to hit the girl across the face, as she had been about to do. The urchin's head snapped up, speaking quick and sharp with a thick and distinctly Cockney accent. _Muggle_, was the insult that graced her royal ears, and to add further insult to injury, Emma had no possible hint of what it meant.

She got as far as **'I will have you know I am not a muggle, In fact I—' **When she felt the appraisal on herself abruptly stop. Eleri, as she soon learned was the girl's name, took the news without a second's deliberation, asking next if Emma was 'Pure', or 'Tainted.' The answer, to the Queen of England, was clear.

What passed next was the forming of one of possibly the oddest of friendships in all of Britannia. Emma could read the chaos that resided behind Eleri's darkly hooded eyes; it lingered with the electricity of a storm and promised to be equally as destructive. It excited her with the possibilities that harnessing this devilishness could bring for the God-fearing.

Brief run-ins in with Emma's devised front of comparing magic from her homeland, (which was preposterous, as demons could not exist outside the island), to that of Diagon Alley's became shorter and shorter, and were replaced with letters when the Queen found it difficult to make excuses not to perform the witchcraft herself. The demon work Emma saw preformed over that period of time she has never recounted to any other living soul.

With the prescience of what atrocities Eleri would be convicted of in future, they were not for the faint of heart.

But neither Emma nor her newfound knowledge in Eleri could have stopped the St. Brice's day massacre, a day her husband ordered the annihilation of every Danish man in the county. While the Danish hold on the outskits of the country was far too strong for this order to be carried out with accuracy, one causality would send the Danish King Forkbeard over the edge. The death of his sister.

Luck or perhaps it was her routine to screen her husband Æthelred's correspondence on top of the other small unnoticed routines she slipped into at the castle in order to gain information, but it was Emma who received the letter from Forkbeard on the subject of the heartless killing of his sister. Naturally, she confiscated it. There was little need for the King's eyes to be graced with a matter as trivial as condolence.

A month later King Forkbeard of Denmark's longships were spotted once more sailing steadily for the coast of England, this time with the intent of raiding East Anglia. Raiding, raping and plundering their way across the country as they did so, coming at the end of their time to Humber.

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	3. Duke Roderc Peverell of Humber

__Duke Roderc Peverell of Humber__

_._

It takes a noble heart to be raised with the variety of responsibility that Roderc Peverell had known he would one day inherit. The land of Humber stretches a large vicinity, being gotten by his ancestors for their generosity and brilliant up keeping of the domain. If he could not take care of his people as well or better, he was obligated to let them their village be dissociated with his rule, if they so choose.

From an early age, Roderc knew he would not have the bravery to face the disgrace to his line if this were to happen. He learned the habits of his fathers, and all appeared to be well. The Vikings raids had been sporadic for the past hundred years, and there was no reason to believe they could not be bought with a tithe as they had in the past.

In the meantime, there was the family legend.

The Peverells had from the beginning of the parting of the original three, taken pains for secrecy and to safeguard their descendants from the perils the gift from death could bring. The cloak that granted its wearer invisibility was handed down from parent to firstborn child, regardless of gender. The ceremony where the cloak was bestowed was a private one, with only the immediate family in attendance. The new bearer was between the ages of 9 and 12, at an age of crucial curiosity and youthful exuberance.

The tale of the hallows, and what was rumored to occur when the three gifts fell to one owner, was not one ever entrusted the eldest Peverell child.

Roderc knew only of the cloak; as a youngster he begged his father relentlessly to try it on, once, but the only concession the part of this father's was letting him touch it's silvery sheen with one finger. The elder Peverell was preoccupied with the threat of the Vikings to the north to pay more heed; by 1003 in the year of our Lord, they had devastated the borders of Humber three times, two occurring in the past two years. Matters had gone too far.

A petition was sent to King Æthelred for his permission and support of a fleet of ships to sail against the Vikings, and the response was favorable. The King would send what he could, but lack of funds was again sited as the reason for the majority of the crewmen to be natives of Humber. The Duke set sail a week after the birth of his second daughter, Adwen, named so after the Welsh Saint.

The brave man was met in combat, chasing the Nordic longships over the North Sea, the battles lasting for six hard months. The Vikings had long been at sea, resting in Humber after their invasion beginning in East Anglia, and their men were in want of the sight of home's shore once more. The Duke had chosen his men well, taking those sea hardened and wary men that exist to fill stools in local taverns.

At the closing of the sixth month, the Duke was slain at the hands of Thorknell the Tall. At his side and witness to the event was his protégée, the young Lambert, son of King Forkbeard. Lacking the Duke, the few remnants of the English fell apart, and Forkbeard returned to Denmark victorious.

This left the six year old Roderc the heir of his father's title as duke, as well his cloak of invisibility.

One could say that receiving the cloak at his impressionable age had an effect on his sensibilities. While in actuality control over the land fell to his mother, the shoes the Duke had left to fill became almost as legendary to Roderc as the story of the genesis of the cloak. He took every opportunity he could to go to the docks under the guise of his cloak and watch the dockmen who had gone back to their fish after returning from the last fateful battle.

Many appeared as void, emotionless shells whose faces mirrored the weather that plagued the coast. Deep mists and the heavy crashing of tides on the piers could not put a stop to their daily routine, or Roderc's. Traders would arrive, and the youngster would board, exploring, hoping to find meaning in the foreign objects on board.

The coming years brought yet another raid on the region, as King Forkbeard returned as promised with a replenished army. The Dutchess Peverell was the one who made the choice, this time at the entreating of a letter bearing the seal of the King & Queen of England, to support the crown by donating a further 20,000 pounds to add to the Danish tithe.

The Vikings were not appeased, and continued their sporadic razing of seaside towns.

Rodric as an eight year old boy, unable to do more than wave about his sparing rod and read, was dissatisfied with both options given to him. They were a safe means of gaining a stuffy education, and lacked the element of the unknown, and that of risk. At his first chance, he left a letter to his family and stowed away on the next ship bound for foreign parts.

Draped in invisibility, there were still the odd couple of sailors on each ship that would notice how by the end of the day there were apples or other odd bits of food missing. The sympathetic galley cooks, with raiders on their thoughts generously put it down to rats and vermin while leaving the spare cut of dried meat or ration of bread half obscured on the kitchen counter after their superiors had retired.

He traveled a great many places, meeting those of all forms and walks of life, both muggle and wizard like himself. Over the course of four years he sailed as far the East Orient, jumping ship at each port for a new vessel to avoid detection. Sailors were not known to be keen on lads as young as he thinking they could earn a man's dinner and Roderc held no illusions about his strength. He preferred to sit on deck aside the men as they told tales to each other in their ragged, salty tones. The talk was candid and real, uncensored to the ear of a Duke, and Roderc put every word to memory.

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><p>This is the second half of the prelude to The Founding rpg. Please visit our site for more information, the information is on our profile.<p> 


	4. Eleri the Evil

__Eleri the Evil__

_._

Years passed since Eleri first made the acquaintance of a girl introducing herself as Emma the Chimney Sweep of Normandy, a pureblood witch who had come to London in search of work. To her, Emma presented herself as a curiosity although that was not without the odd wonderment or two. Emma had about her a raw power that was unfitting for an orphan girl, and Eleri found herself often backing down from her habitually blunt way of questioning people when it came to her stare. It must be her lineage, for Emma was pureblood. Her line had to lead back to a great wizard, as powerful as the entire Danish fleet.

Eleri was born in Tweek, her parents of average standing in their humble community. Tweek is a small community, odd from its neighbors in its geographic isolation and the local muggle people's high tolerance for magic. This harmony existed in part because the population was small enough that the magical inhabitants could trade small tasks in magic for those without the ability, without it being a burden or hassle. Intermarriage was not looked down upon, but Eleri's parents were proud to be able to trace their family history down through generations of wizards and witches of Tweek before them.

The move to London sent the young Eleri into fits that lasted for months. She did not appreciate the city landscape, nor the crowds of muggles that suddenly she had to be cautious of. Why should she, as a witch have to live in the back alleyways of Diagon, and only leave when she dressed and acted as though she were _normal_? Wizardkind was meant to be greater, stronger, _above_.

With Emma at her side, she came to detest the other muggle children in London even more. The slightest of sights that upset her would set off her magic, which often manifested itself as sudden freak disturbances in the weather. There was little incentive for her to learn to control her 'rages', as her father called them lovingly, for the result to Eleri was justified and often the cause of her delight (as long as her parents were none the wiser). The muggle children's mutt on the street corner had deserved to be blown by a strange wind into the cart traffic on the street; the old laundry maid had deserved to slip on the patch of ice that formed in mid-summer.

But Eleri was far from the cold, determined apathy that would mark her future henchman Tigernus. For her it was the re-establishment of the great and almighty equilibrium of magic over man. She was not lacking in passion for her ideals.

Frequently Eleri would spend her afternoons with Emma ranting over the state of magic over Britannia; the Peverells returning to conversation time and time again. They were a family to the north, of status and with a large region of land they governed with the aid of their magic. Muggles were actually _supported_, unbeknownst to them in times of trouble by the family's magic. This practice had extended for generations, and in Eleri's mind was the point and cause of the reason those of magic were not able to show themselves.

Their unworthy association with those below them had muggles utterly spoiled, at the cost of witches and wizards. Further, the Peverells were rumored to have a family talisman, the likes of which were supposed to have kept the family in fortune since its creation. Eleri refused to admit she was jealous of it, even to her new confidant.

Emma, however, grew distant until the only way the two were in touch was over carefully written letters. It was easier, she had written, when she had so many chores at the orphanage to be able to write a letter by the soot of the dying fire after the caretaker had gone to sleep, than to risk being caught not working in daylight.

Eleri began to spend her days reading the manuscripts that were piled high in the back of her father's shop. It provided her mainly with a history of pureblood accomplishments and dogmas- but it was on the night of her sixteenth birthday that Eleri came across a passage that enchanted her into the greatest rage she had ever thrown. It killed her father, who had unwittingly been in the shop, and injured three bystanders who had been in the street beyond.

She was imprisoned by muggle officers accusing witchcraft, for Eleri's father's shop had been located in a muggle inhabited area of London. Her grief stricken mother was told there was no chance of her daughter escaping the trail without a death sentence, and until the first moment of the proceedings all looked to be over for Eleri the Evil.

Queen Emma was not aware of the names of those being tried for demonic practices each day, but she had the habit of attending the trails as her husband delivered their sentences for burning or hanging.

It took all of Eleri's unpracticed will not to explode on the spot when she recognized the Queen as Emma, the same orphaned witch she had met years ago. Perhaps it was that Emma took notice of the steam billowing from Eleri's ears, and knowing the potential ruin she could stir, called a recess in which she met privately with the girl charged for the murder of her own father.

Furious at being misled, Eleri threatened to make it known during the trial to her entire court that their Queen was in fact a witch— a fact she had years of written documentation proving. Equally incensed, Emma was able to keep herself the picture of calm. She agreed to let Eleri go, under the condition that she would not backslide and seek harm to herself or title once free. Unable to trust either by swearing over their gods, they settled for being bound in an unbreakable oath. Neither would seek harm to the other.

For the moment that was enough to satisfy Eleri.

Once free she fled to France, where she was eager to unearth more about the passage that had led to her inadvertently bringing about the death of her father. She had read of a wand of power, the greatest wand ever fashioned. Fabled to win against any foe, it possessed the magic of death and creation, bridled in elder wood. And at the moment this wand was without a master. It lay dormant in a monastery in Neuillay, guarded by the likes of _muggle monks_, who believed it to be a holy relic.

If there was a wand which could control her rages it would be this wand; it would be capable of directing her mania with the force of a thousand sieges. The possibilities would be endless…

Taking the Elder wand had been easier than expected. She left in the same season she had come, traveling next to Scotland, where she had received word from her Queen that the opportunity had arisen for them both to rid Britannia of the Peverells once and for all.

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	5. Roderc the Fraud of Humber

__Roderc the Fraud of Humber__

_._

By the time of Roderc's return to Humber he was coming fast on twelve summers, and over that time he had not spoken a single word to a soul. Even to that of the wind.

The remaining Peverells embraced their lost son, scolding him all the while smiles that couldn't be hidden shined through their expressions. They had believed their line lost, and with it the cloak of their legacy. If they were concerned or irritated that their son and brother was mute to their questions it was not pressed. In truth, Roderc had grown far too comfortable with invisibility to be able to learn to speak again, and did not fully know if he possessed the will to when to be unseen was the greatest comfort and security he had ever been granted.

Despite this setback, Roderc was granted his full authority as Duke of Humber, although he still took the calm advice his mother offered him. The land had traditionally been seen to as the domain of all of the living Peverells, and the fourteen year old was not as out of depth as might have been suspected. It was agreed on by all to send 30,000 pounds, the last of the Peverell's fortune, to London to supplement the tithe. Recent years had seen the moral of the English fade considerably; the King had taken to forming another band of ships to meet the aggressors, but the establishment had failed when a key captain had taken to piracy over his duties.

The payment of the tithe was not enough for Roderc. Gold was gold, and there was the hope of all in sending it, but he had seen that inaction on his part would come to nothing. He would not be idle.

Roderc sent petition after petition to the royal court, asking as he was certain all noble men of land were, permission and funds to sail against the Vikings. Months passed before he was answered, in a curt letter topped with the seal of Queen Emma. The Duke was instructed to take his ships and every able man to sea immediately; that they would be met with a colossal force of the King's own to attack the Danish.

The fleet was assembled in a matter of days, leaving the region of Humber a village of women and children with nary a weapon between households.

After a week on the water, neither Roderc nor any of the sea faring men aboard could determine their direction. North ran as south, the stars blinked or hid from them in the sky; the currents they had known swirled around them in confusion. Magic was addling their course- that much was certain- but there was no undoing the spells that had been woven around them. Land could not be found, and it was only for the owls that had been brought on board that word was able to be sent back to Humber and food was able to be transported to feed the starving men.

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><p>This is the second half of the prelude to The Founding rpg. Please visit our site for more information, the information is on our profile.<p> 


	6. Adwen the Churlish of Humber

__Adwen the Churlish of Humber__

_._

For seven years the Duke and his sailors sailed in circles around the North Sea, lost. Roderc's mother and sisters, Gwenabwy and Adwen would have had no hint that they had not sunk had it not been for the owls they received. They agreed it was witchcraft, but were equally stuck to find a source for they knew of no enemies to their family save the Vikings.

There was little hope, but one small prospect. There was a spellbook in the Peverell's library which described the process of Apparition, a feat Roderc's father's father had been able to achieve but none else in the family had sought to learn. Transporting another person or another object by this same magic was possible, but required a great finesse and strength to his magic that Roderc at fourteen did not possess. But other means could not be found, for the crew could not be tracked down with magic carpets or broomsticks when they did not know their location. Roderc began spend his days on board readying his concentration and practicing appariting from ship to ship in his mighty. If there was hope for anyone to transport an object as large as a ship and crew in one go it would be down to silent Duke, who had already spent years building his focus.

From across the sea, Adwen was much in awe of her brother. The youngest of three, it was tradition for each generation of Peverells to try for three children, in honor of their legendary three ancestors. But there was little for her to do- or for her sister to do, for that matter. Gwenabwy was by far the more serious of the two, forever reading for a scrap of information or knowledge that would prove useful for someone. Adwen would never speak ill of her sister, but she grew paler in her pursuit of learning that so far had come to help no one. What she needed had not been entrusted to a book for safe keeping.

In the first year of Roderc's departure, Adwen would take to flying her broomstick up to Gwenabwy's tower and rapping on the window as loudly as she could to get her sister out of her room. Every so often it worked, as she knew Gwenabwy loved flying as much as she did, racing across the sky over the coast on the opposite side of town as the village.

It was the pair of them that shouted the first warning of the longships on the horizon, bearing Viking sails. It was a fleet greater than they had ever seen, an army bigger than one come for the sole purpose of raiding Humber as they had many times before. From the Viking's first steps on dry land it was clear to all that they meant this to be the last invasion of Britannia; King Forkbeard was bound for London to take the crown and Humber was to be their base until this was achieved.

Adwen and Gwenabwy's mother was the first notable death.

With their brother lost at sea, the responsibility for the region fell to Gwenabwy. Not that she had any authority granted to her by the Vikings, who took control of the people as soon as they landed. The remaining two Peverells, who had no wealth left after the tithes save their castle, fled. They were sheltered by a family with two other children, who looked in appearance close enough to the sisters for the four to pass as siblings.

Everyday Adwen struggled with herself. It was the tradition in the Peverell line for only one member of each generation to know the whole and true story of the Tale of the Three Brothers, and of the hallowed gifts they possessed. Adwen had been chosen of her and her sister, for the purpose of the fact was to separate the one with the gift from the one with the potential to destroy the sanctity of the cloak. Her father's youngest brother had been the one to sit Adwen on his lap and spin the entire mythos as it had been imparted to him by his aunt before and so on.

Adwen was told of the existence of three of items: a wand, a ring and a cloak, all three of which had belonged to her predecessors, if only the last was still retained by the Peverells. The wand was a wand of great power; possessing the ability to out preform any opponent that came up against it. The ring as well had a great deal of magic put into it; having the ability to help it's user bring the dead back to life. The third was the cloak, in the possession of her brother.

All three were dangerous, and had led to the death of many righteous and brave wizards. But this was little in comparison to what would happen when one person was the master and owner of all three objects.

One possessing the three would become the Master of Death.

Adwen had been warned to tell this news to a soul, that the gravest act she could ever preform would be to let her brother in on the secret of the hallows. When Roderc grew older and had children of his own Adwen would be the one to pull of the younger siblings aside but until then the ideas that the tale planted in the heads of man was not for those as pure and noble as her brother.

Those who believed themselves invincible to corruption often had a horrible habit of trying to prove the notion for some noble cause. It was not worth the risk. Nevertheless, there was a faint hope in Adwen that her sister Gwenabwy would be able to understand some hope in the story that went far over Adwen's comprehension. There was no hiding her sister was more intelligent than she, and there was the possibility, however faint, that it could be their salvation from the Vikings, or the means of bringing back Roderc.

Whatever her reason, Adwen never told either.

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><p>This is the second half of the prelude to The Founding rpg. Please visit our site for more information, the information is on our profile.<p> 


	7. Prince Lambert of Denmark

__Prince Lambert of Denmark__

_._

If one is the crown Prince of a country, your life is pretty much made. There is no need to prove yourself, at least until you are King, all you have to worry about is not getting yourself impaled or poisoned or killed in any other way that crown princes are frequently killed. If you are the second son of a King, as Cnut, baptized Lambert was, your life requires more than a modicum of effort.

From an early age Lambert, as a Viking Prince, was placed under the tutorage of Thorknell the Tall. Thorknell was battle hardened and built like a great bear walking on its hind legs. He had been second in command under King Forkbeard since the raids had picked up speed, and was personally in charge of turning the green little prince into a Viking.

Lambert proved not to take to the death or glory as much as Thorknell, but he did not embarrass himself with acts unbefitting of his training and when it came down to the wire. He was not tall and strong, and said to be of the handsomest of men with exception of his nose; its hooked shape being often the brunt of jokes around the training yard. The strangeness was that if there was ever a moment where he hesitated or he was not as quick, something unexpected, unthought of and unbidden, almost like a magic at his fingertips would turn the situation in his favor. Lambert, suspecting it was unusual kept his mouth shut on the topic.

By the time of his father's invasion of Britannia via the weakened area of Humber, Lambert was ready to take his father's war in stride. The English were soft fellows, incapable of anything more than running from their swords in terror and insisting on building flammable housing. His father had further confided that the English Queen had been in correspondence, attesting that the English were ripe for the taking, and that Humber in particular would provide them with the handhold needed to take the country within the month.

Very little blood was shed, for King Æthelred fled to Normandy with his Queen on word of the invasion. With no resistance, King Forkbeard along with his son took London and the crown.

All would have been well for Forkbeard, who had spent of majority of his Kingship of Denmark attempting to throttle Britannia, but two weeks after arriving in London he died. The crown Prince of Denmark, Lambert's older brother Harold II took over the Danish throne while his Viking fellows voted Lambert as the new King of all of England.

This did not bode well with Æthelred, who still had the support of the English nobility. He returned to England to find the former Viking army scattered, and Lambert uncertain of what to do in his father's absence. The Danes left London in order to regroup, collecting their wits as they did so. The embarrassment did not last long.

King Harold II of Denmark was not pleased to see his little brother back in his country. He had always been a protective man, and felt Lambert's return both a threat to his own throne and a disappointment to their family name. He sent him packing back to England with an army fit for a King, telling him there would be no future for him elsewhere if he could not manage to hold his spear the right way round.

Lambert returned to England in the next year, Thorknell in stride behind him, to find that at long last the aging King Æthelred had joined his own father in either heaven or hell. His effort for the throne of England was taken up by this own son from an early marriage, Prince Edmund Ironside. Ironside was not pleased with the way in which his father had been manhandling the country and letting his nation be overtaken- he was certain it was the direct result of his step-mother, the Queen, who had coerced his father into running the country into the ground.

The efforts of Lambert and Thorknell on their return were a force Ironside had not accounted for. The Queen herself wrote of their coming and the reason for her cowardly step-son's flight from the Palace in London to Whales:

_"There were so many kinds of shields, that you could have believed that troops of all nations were present. … Gold shone on the prows, silver also flashed on the variously shaped ships. … For who could look upon the lions of the foe, terrible with the brightness of gold, who upon the men of metal, menacing with golden face, … who upon the bulls on the ships threatening death, their horns shining with gold, without feeling any fear for the king of such a force? Furthermore, in this great expedition there was present no slave, no man freed from slavery, no low-born man, no man weakened by age; for all were noble, all strong with the might of mature age, all sufficiently fit for any type of fighting, all of such great fleetness, that they scorned the speed of horsemen."_

With the King again in exile, Lambert chose to go against Thorknell's advice and settled on a peace with Ironside. They were both in the middle of wars begun by other men, and both wished to keep their armies alive to see another day. A treaty was struck upon where Lambert and the Danes would rule Britannia north of the river Thames, and Ironside would keep the south, including the city of London.

It is a very strange occurrence throughout the whole of history, but there is a habit among those newly crowned to die very suddenly in odd circumstances.

In that fine tradition, King Edmund Ironside passed away no more than a month into his reign. As per the terms of the peace, his holdings passed to one King Lambert the Great. But there was one last hurdle left, and that was the securing of the nobles support.

He need not have worried. King Lambert found himself drawn to the former Queen, Emma the Auspicious. Her beauty could not be rivaled, and her knowledge of the inner workings of London kept him in constant amazement. Furthermore, her devotion to the Catholic Church was without equal. The pair was married, and with it the nobles rather grudgingly accepted his authority as King of Britannia.

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><p>This is the second half of the prelude to The Founding rpg. Please visit our site for more information, the information is on our profile.<p> 


	8. Queen Emma of Normany

__Emma the Auspicious of Normany, Queen of England, Denmark, and parts of Sweden__

_._

No one was more pleased at this series of events than Emma, who after a few months scrambling for bearing after her husband Æthelred's death had regained her Queendom in Lambert's dimwitted flirting. Their marriage was convenient, when Thorknell was not hovering or Sir Eadric his advisor was not eavesdropping.

The return of Roderc Peverell had not been foreseen. Eleri had informed her he had used witchcraft, powerful and of a brand unknown to herself. Emma responded with force, in one foul swoop. The Peverells were stripped of their holding in Humber and any remaining wealth they had. Publically disgraced as incapable children, citizens were encouraged to scorn them and refuse them stay where ever they went.

In all honesty, the Queen was not aware of the school being built in the north of the country until Eleri's henchman Tigernus the Lurking tracked the Peverells in their flight from Humber. Eleri's report of the building of a school for halfblood and muggle raised filth to have sing-songs and enchant rainbows did not please either of them. The Queen might have her Danish crown, but her position continued to be as precarious as it ever was. Demons and devil worshipers with ungodly abilities, who were now in the company of a man who had lifted a fleet of warships from the middle of the ungovernable sea to his home port?

All must be destroyed.

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><p>This is the second half of the prelude to The Founding rpg. Please visit our site for more information, the information is on our profile.<p> 


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